THE FINANCIER
"I want to marry Aileen," Cowperwood repeated, for
emphasis' sake. "She wants to marry me. Under the
circumstances, however you may feel, you can have no
real objection to my doing that, I am sure; yet you go
on fighting me—making it hard for me to do what you
really know ought to be done."
Cowperwood smiled inwardly at this subtle presenta-
tion of his case. He knew now, by Butler's very attitude,
that he had him in a vulnerable position and could do
something to improve his own.
"Ye're a clever man," said Butler, seeing through his
motives quite clearly. " Ye're a sharper, to my way of
thinkin', and it's no child of mine I want connected with
ye. I'm not sayin', seein' that things are as they are,
that if ye were a free man it wouldn't be better that she
should marry ye. It's the one dacent thing ye could do
—if ye would, which I doubt. But that's nayther here
nor there now. What can ye want with her hid away
somewhere? Ye can't marry her. Ye can't get a divorce.
Ye've got your hands full fightin' your lawsuits and kap-
in' yourself out of jail. She'll only be an added expense
to ye, and ye'll be wantin' all the money ye have for
other things, I'm thinkin'. Why should ye want to be
takin' her away from a dacent home and makin' some-
thing out of her that ye'd be ashamed to marry if you
could? The laist ye could do, if ye were any kind of a
man at all, and had any of that thing that ye're plazed to
call love, would be to lave her at home and keep her as
respectable as possible. Mind ye, I'm not thinkin' she
isn't ten thousand times too good for ye, whatever ye've
made of her. But if ye had any sinse of dacency left, ye
wouldn't let her shame her family and break her old
mother's heart, and that for no purpose except to make
her worse than she is already. What good can ye get
out of it, now ? What good can ye expect to come of it?
Be hivins, if ye had any sinse at all I should think ye
could see that for yourself. Ye're only addin' to your
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